I don’t need to read about it. I don’t need the grisly headline or interviews with neighbors who had no idea. I don’t need psychologists deconstructing the tortured motives of the shooter. I can fill in the blanks. We all can.

It’s not that I don’t care. During my 25 years of teaching on both coasts, I’ve sat through the funeral of a student who died on the wrong end of a beef in Dorchester, and had a bullet pierce the window of my eighth-grade history class in Oakland. Not to worry, said the cop who showed up the next day. Just a drive-by. Probably not meant for you.